


seasons change (but people don't)

by ftmsteverogers



Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: FtM Steve, M/M, Trans Steve Rogers, Transgender themes, mlm author
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-03
Updated: 2014-09-03
Packaged: 2018-02-15 23:33:38
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,046
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2247549
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ftmsteverogers/pseuds/ftmsteverogers
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“If there’s a girl I’m meant to be mourning, I want to know,” Bucky persists, as though Steve hasn’t had a close brush with asphyxiation right before his eyes.  His foot twitches against Steve’s under the table.</p><p>“There wasn’t a girl,” Steve coughs.  “Why…?”</p><p>Bucky’s gaze is sharp and discerning as his eyes flick back and forth between Steve’s.</p><p>“There was,” he says, right hand gripping the counter behind him in a white-knuckled grasp.  “A girl.  A small blonde girl.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	seasons change (but people don't)

**Author's Note:**

> TW for discussion of dysphoria! There is also mention of binding with ace bandages in this story, but I neither support nor endorse this unsafe type of binding. Please bind safely.
> 
> As always, ad_astra_03 is the reason I can put pen to paper. You're my mission, SK.

“Thank you,” Bucky says, swirling his coffee around in his cup.  He’s ducking his head, hair falling into his eyes, but Steve can’t tell if it’s to hide a wince or a smile—Bucky has a tendency to hide both, these days.  His metal fingers tap against the granite counter top.  What the morse code that he is tapping spells out, however, is beyond Steve’s comprehension.

Steve hooks his ankle around Bucky’s underneath the kitchen table and prays that he knows what he’s doing.

 

* * *

 

Bucky buys Steve too-tight undershirts and ace bandages to flatten down any amorphous femininity beneath his shirt.  He cuts off Steve's pigtails over the bathroom sink, slicks back his blond hair with pomade, kisses Steve's forehead and tells him he looks dumb, calls him a _swell fella_ the next morning through a yawn when Steve brings him his coffee—

“I’m not sure who I’m supposed to be,” Steve says, looking at himself in the mirror, with Bucky standing behind him.  His skinny arms look almost like his bones are standing through his skin, and he’s always been this way, but his skin feels particularly thin lately, and his bones feel particularly brittle.

Bucky reaches around Steve’s body to adjust the way Steve’s sleeves are rolled up past his elbows, fingertips gliding over the fabric and the skin in the same way—like he is smoothing out the sickness between Steve’s cells, like he is inscribing something beautiful into the muscles and ligaments that make up Steve’s body.  Steve’s left sleeve falls again.  Bucky rolls it up another time, and this time it stays.

“Who the fuck cares, huh?” he says, resting his chin on top of Steve’s head.  “You’ll be a punk no matter what you do.”

And Steve ducks his head, grinning, lets Bucky press a kiss to the nape of his neck, to his jaw—

 

* * *

 

“Trouble sleeping?” Steve asks, sitting in the space next to Bucky that always seems to be vacant for him.  Bucky is looking up at the sky, eyes half lidded, fingers curling around the grass like claws—Steve watches the starlight make strange shadows fall across his face, wishing he knew what was flickering behind those half-open eyes.  He didn’t used to have to strain to read Bucky’s mind.  He didn’t used to have to riddle out Bucky’s thoughts.

“Dum-Dum’s snoring got kind of oppressive,” Bucky answers, tearing his eyes away from the stars so he can tip a wry smile in Steve’s direction.

Steve huffs a laugh.  He doesn’t wrap an arm around Bucky’s shoulders until Bucky’s head falls onto his shoulder, and even then his touch is still tentative, still hesitant despite the explicit permission.  He doesn’t know what happened in that HYDRA base.  Bucky doesn’t tell him.

“The serum,” Bucky says.  “It’s—you look good.”

“Different,” Steve agrees.

“How do you feel?” Bucky asks.  His face, only half-illuminated by the moonlight, is unreadable.  Steve exhales a breath through his teeth, Bucky’s shoulders underneath his arm not quite solid enough to soothe his worries any, and squints a glance upward at the sky as though it could give him guidance.

“Taller,” Steve answers eventually, with a small wince of a smile.  Bucky’s gaze softens visibly.  He curls a hand around the fabric of Steve’s shirt, pushes him onto his back on the grass, and swallows Steve’s noise of surprise when he kisses him hard, as though trying to prove something.

 

* * *

 

Bucky startles at the movement, but he doesn’t protest Steve’s foot resting against his own, just clutches his coffee cup a little tighter and watches Steve with wary eyes.  Steve hates himself for resenting that wariness—it is an open wound, that Bucky does not trust him yet, but it should not have been _his_ open wound; his chest was not split open, mud was not packed between his ribs.  Bucky has every right to bleed.  (Steve still looks down at his open palms and sees red.)

“Was I ever in love?” Bucky asks suddenly, and Steve very nearly chokes on his mouthful of coffee.  “If there’s a girl I’m meant to be mourning, I want to know,” Bucky persists, as though Steve hasn’t had a close brush with asphyxiation right before his eyes.  His foot twitches against Steve’s under the table.

“There wasn’t a girl,” Steve coughs.  “Why…?”

Bucky’s gaze is sharp and discerning as his eyes flick back and forth between Steve’s.

“There was,” he says, right hand gripping the counter behind him in a white-knuckled grasp.  “A girl.  A small blonde girl.”

Steve’s stomach drops, heart pounding alarm through his veins—

 

* * *

 

—Bucky’s mouth warm and familiar as it drags over his skin.  Steve makes a small, soft noise, turning away from the bathroom mirror to wind his arms around Bucky’s neck and drag him into a real kiss.  Bucky presses him against the sink, hands steady at Steve’s skinny hips, and kisses him, as he always has, with a thorough kind of desperation.  Steve lets him nestle himself between his legs, the sound of their belt buckles clinking together making him gasp a breathless laugh as Bucky sucks his lower lip between his own.

“Are you gonna fuck me against the bathroom sink?” he asks, amused, and twists his fingers in Bucky’s hair.

“I was considering it,” Bucky answers, voice muffled against Steve’s collar bone when he dips his head to mouth over the base of his throat—

 

* * *

 

—even though he knows that there is nothing left to prove.  Bucky presses him into the grass and kisses him, one knee on either side of Steve’s hips, palms dragging over Steve’s uniform until his fingertips catch on the star in the middle of Steve’s chest.  He stops there, face twisted into something foreign, and lets one of his hands linger directly over Steve’s sternum.

Steve has difficulty catching his breath.  He hasn’t felt this desperate to breathe since he was eleven years old and flailing a hand in the direction of his inhaler, hasn’t had to pull each breath this hard into his lungs in longer than he wants to remember.  Bucky’s hands are blisteringly hot.  Steve’s back arches into his touch.  Bucky wriggles into place between Steve’s thighs and worms a hand into the front of his pants, but he pauses, surprised, when he slips into Steve’s underwear.

“What is it?” Steve asks, pink-flushed, lifting his head up a little to try and discern the look on Bucky’s face.  Bucky huffs a breath through his teeth.  He’s frowning in concentration as two of his fingers slide inside Steve easily, twisting upward the way he knows Steve likes best—and then Steve is making a low, keening noise, head falling back onto the grass.

“The serum,” Bucky explains a little breathlessly, his free hand curling around one of Steve’s knees to open his legs a little further.  “I thought it would…”

“Give me a dick?” Steve asks, unimpressed.  Even in the dark, he can see Bucky blush.

“I didn’t know what to think,” he mutters.  After a moment of deliberation, Steve sits up, curls his legs around Bucky’s waist, and kisses him again, tasting the edge of desperation that always seems to linger on Bucky's lips these days.  Rolling his hips slowly, rocking onto Bucky’s fingers, grinding down onto the heel of Bucky’s hand—it’s familiar, and it aches, even as it makes warmth flood between his legs.

“Some things never change, Bucky,” he murmurs against Bucky’s mouth.  There is regret there, but there’s also relief, and when Bucky buries his face in the crook of Steve’s neck, Steve knows which feeling stings the hardest—

 

* * *

 

—and makes his hands tighten convulsively around his coffee cup.

“There wasn’t a girl,” Steve says again.  His voice has grown quiet enough that it feels weak in his throat.  Bucky’s face screws up a little, brow creasing, blue eyes flickering back and forth between Steve’s before his gaze settles directly between Steve’s eyes, where he once aimed a gun.

“But I know her,” Bucky says helplessly, and Steve can’t bear to look at him any longer. 

“I was small,” he says.  “And blond.  Before the serum.”

Bucky’s bewilderment is almost palpable.  “But—”

“And,” Steve continues, swallowing back the bile that rises up in his throat, “In answer to your question, yes.  You were in love.  And so was I.”

Realization splinters over Bucky’s face, and the cup, in between his palms, falls from suddenly lax fingers and shatters against the linoleum floor.

 

* * *

 

Bucky does end up fucking him against the bathroom sink, Steve’s arms around his neck, Bucky’s palms pressed flat against the mirror behind him.  He will leave a thousand smudged handprints on the surface by the time they’re done, hot breath fogging the glass as much as it warms the curve of Steve’s neck.

In the bathroom, in their apartment, in Brooklyn—Steve and Bucky have carved out a home for themselves amongst the rubble and chipped pavement of the rest of the city.  Outside the boundaries that they built around their carved-out hollow at the base of Brooklyn’s throat, the world is entombed in darkness that Steve is unwilling to meet head-on.  But here, with Bucky, in the circle of his arms, rocked against the sink with every thrust of his hips—every connection of Bucky’s thighs to Steve’s, every collision of a kiss to the edge of Steve’s jaw is a drop of sunlight that pools at the crook of Steve’s elbow.  Underneath his tongue, pressed against the backs of his teeth.

“Ah, fuck, Steve—” Bucky gasps, and pulls out, coming in shudders over Steve’s thigh.  Steve kisses him through it, back arching when Bucky slips a hand between his legs to fuck him determinedly with three twisting fingers until Steve’s hand convulses in his hair.

“What d’you think?” Steve pants, mouthing over one of Bucky’s cheekbones.  “Still a punk?”

“Some things never change, pal,” Bucky laughs as he tries to catch his breath.  They stand there, wrapped up in each other, for a long time.

 

* * *

 

Bucky’s eyes have the stars reflected in them, but his expression is unreadable. 

"You shouldn't be here," he says finally, his voice so quiet that Steve can barely hear it over the racing of his pulse.  "Should've stayed in Brooklyn where I left you."

"You know me, Buck," Steve shrugs, smile growing ever so slightly brittle, and kisses Bucky's bone-weary face.  "Couldn't stay away from a fight if I tried."

"Some things never change," Bucky agrees, and pushes him down flat onto his back, Steve pressed between the damp grass and Bucky's warm, insistent kiss. 

 

* * *

 

Steve picks up the broken pieces of Bucky's mug and mops up the mess with a dish towel while Bucky watches him with wide, blue eyes.  He doesn't look up until there's no danger of either of them stepping on a ceramic shard, and even then, he only looks at Bucky out of the corners of his eyes, avoiding that shattered, accusatory gaze while he washes his hands. 

"You should've told me," Bucky says, and Steve's soapy hands tighten under the running water. 

"What was I supposed to say?" he asks softly.  "You aren't—obligated.  Just 'cause we used to be—whatever we were.  You don't have to now."  Focusing on the act of turning off the water, of reaching for a new dish towel, the individual muscles that have to move in order for him to dry his hands—it keeps him from trembling, even though he feels a little like he's going to shake himself to pieces if he isn't careful.

"Hey," Bucky says, cold left hand sliding over the small of Steve's back, and Steve stills.  " _Hey._  Quit that." 

Steve's eyes are fixed unseeingly on the sink in front of him, back frozen under Bucky's touch.  "Bucky..."

Both of Bucky's arms come up to circle around Steve's waist.  His face is pressed in between Steve's shoulder blades, lower lip catching on the dip between two of Steve's vertebrae—Steve's breath is rough down his throat, scraping into his lungs with every inhalation, like his throat is made of sandpaper.

"Some things never change, pal," Bucky murmurs.

There is a choked noise in Steve's mouth, but Bucky turns him around and swallows it before it can pass Steve's lips.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm barneswilson on tumblr! Come say hi :)


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